156 Chinese Clay Figures 



things in the dim candle-light of school traditions, and to think of the 

 rhinoceros as an exclusively southern, tropical animal; but the fact 

 remains that it is not, any more than the tiger, whose original home 

 doubtless was on the Amur, and who is a comparatively recent intruder 

 into Bengal. Climatic conditions and natural surroundings were dif- 

 ferent in ancient China from what they are at present ; and the hills were 

 still crowned by dense forests which were haunted by colossal pachy- 

 derms, like the elephant, the tapir, and the rhinoceros. 1 



The historical fact that the rhinoceros was a living contemporary of 

 the ancient Chinese is fully confirmed by the investigations and results 

 of palaeontology. As early as 1871, F. Porter Smith 2 stated, "The 

 teeth of the extinct rhinoceros of China, met with in the caves of Sze- 

 ch'uan, are sold as dragon's teeth." Specimens of teeth in the posses- 

 sion of the naturalist D. Hanbury, obtained in Shen-si or Shan-si, were 

 examined by Waterhouse of the British Museum, and referred to 

 Rhinoceros tichorhinus Cuv., Mastodon, Elephas, Equus, and two Hip- 

 pother ia. 3 



Armand David discovered at Siian-hua fu, north-west of Peking, 

 Chili Province, bones from the extremities of a mammal and a nasal 

 bone fragment, which were sent to Paris and determined by Gaudry 4 

 as belonging to Rhinoceros antiquitatis ; and in 1903 M. Schlosser 6 

 was able to show that this species had once been distributed as far south 

 as the Yang-tse. 



The famous naturalist A. R. Wallace 6 wrote in 1876 that in northern 



1 The alligator is now extinct in the Yang-tse, but has risen to life again in the 

 ancient bone carvings of Ho-nan, and is represented in several excellent specimens 

 in the Field Museum obtained with many others from the late F. H. Chalfant. 



2 Contributions towards the Mat. Med. of China, p. 185. Not all "dragon-teeth" 

 (lung ch'i), however, originate from the rhinoceros. A number of these gathered by 

 me in a drug-store of Hankow and now in the American Museum of New York (Cat. 

 No. 13,847) were examined by the palaeontologist Mr. B. Brown, and contained five 

 teeth of Rhinoceros, one tooth of Mastodon, two teeth of Hipparion (1 m 2 ), and one 

 tooth (P 3 ) of an undescribed Hipparion. The palaeontologist M. Schlosser of Munich 

 (see below) has devoted a careful study to these teeth with remarkable results. 

 Rhinoceros-teeth were employed for medicinal purposes as early as the middle ages. 

 In the Annals of the Sung Dynasty (Sung shi), Biography of Ts'ien Shu (929-988; 

 Giles, Biographical Dictionary, p. 144), there is a record that in the year 963 this 

 prince, ruler of Wu and Yue, sent as tribute ten thousand ounces of silver, one 

 thousand single rhinoceros- teeth (si ya), fifteen thousand catties of perfume and drugs, 

 and a hundred wrought objects of gold, silver, genuine pearls, and tortoise-shell (P'ei 

 wen yiin fu, Ch. 21, p. 114 b). For the year 983, a tribute of rhinoceros-teeth is re- 

 corded in the same Annals as having been sent from San-fo-ts'i (Palembang on the 

 north-east coast of Sumatra). 



3 China Review, Vol. V, 1876, p. 69. 



4 Bulletin de la societe geologique de France, Vol. XXIX, 1871-72, p. 178. 

 6 Die fossilen Saugetiere Chinas (see below), p. 56. 



6 The Geographical Distribution of Animals, Vol. I, p. 123. 



